If you are just starting out in website building, affiliate marketing, or putting your business online, you have probably seen 'SEO' mentioned. Search Engine Optimization. While most people will know what the letters SEO stands for, do they really know 'What is SEO?'
SEO is the practice of improving your rankings on search engine listings, most often Google, commonly referred to as SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages)
As a website owner, you definitely want your site to rank as high as possible for the search terms that someone would use to find your site. For example, if you have a site selling cameras, and a page specifically dedicated to wide angle lenses, you would want that particular page to rank highly when a potential customer types 'wide angle lenses' into a search engine.
And unless you are selling something so obscure that you're one of the only people in the world selling it, you won't get highly ranked without SEO.
It's fair enough to assume that Google and Bing (the big boys of search engines) would prefer that website only rank well by merit, and constantly re-jig their algorithms to ensure such a scenario. So, part of being an expert at SEO is producing quality websites.
I would also like you to keep in mind that there are no absolutes in SEO. Only Google knows what happens within its algorithms and they're not telling, so SEO isn't a definitive science and there are many opinions, viewpoints and worryingly, urban myths about SEO.
There are two main parts to SEO as a whole. On-page and off-page optimization. We'll discuss each in turn.
On Page Optimization
There are a couple of subsections in this too, but I don't want to go into so much detail that I'll confuse the issue right now. On-page can be looked at as letting Google know what your page is all about. When the search engine robots/spiders come to this page, they'll know it's about SEO. When they go to this page, they'll know it's about diamond rings (ladies don't look).
The most famous, and popular, form of on-page optimization is 'keyword density' also known as 'keyword stuffing'. Google can recognize multiple examples of keywords, and keyword phrases, on a page so will make it that much more likely that the page will rank highly for aforementioned keyword.
The most important, in my opinion, and especially since the Panda update, on-page factor in ranking well is to have quality content. And this is not only important for search engine rankings, but for return visitors too. If your page is crap, why would anyone bother to return to it. Nobody will sign up to your newsletters and certainly not buy any of your products.
Other things you can do are ensuring that your targeted keyword is present in the page's URL and title. As an 'alt tag' in pictures on your page, in the page's description and in headers (H1 etc)
Off Page Optimization
Still more important than on-page, is off-page optimization. The most common form of SEO.
It should be said however that without excellent on-page work, everyone you do off-page, is diluted.
This type of SEO is, simply put, link building. It's the process of creating, buying, promoting links to your page from other websites.
Every link you get is similar to the 'like' function on Facebook. Someone is giving your page the thumbs-up. A vote of confidence if you like.
Some links are worth more than others, some are next to useless and some are gold.
There are dozens of ways to get backlinks from article directory marketing to high PR (page rank) blog networks, buying links to content syndication.
What's worth noting is that backlinks with the anchor text (the text that can be clicked on) being the keyword you are promoting are preferable to merely the URL by itself.
A well thought out system of page design, top notch market research(keyword research), high quality content and great backlinking will ensure that your pages rank highly in the search engines.
There are so many other factors involved in ranking that it will be impossible to go through them all, but this should give you a steady start. In fact there are many, many SEO guides on the market that are far beyond the scope of a single page.
Now that you're able to answer the question 'what is SEO' with confidence, I suggest you start working hard on your sites. SEO can take quite a while, months sometimes to achieve first page rankings but the traffic you receive, the business you get and the satisfaction of a job well done is worth it.
SEO is the practice of improving your rankings on search engine listings, most often Google, commonly referred to as SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages)
As a website owner, you definitely want your site to rank as high as possible for the search terms that someone would use to find your site. For example, if you have a site selling cameras, and a page specifically dedicated to wide angle lenses, you would want that particular page to rank highly when a potential customer types 'wide angle lenses' into a search engine.
And unless you are selling something so obscure that you're one of the only people in the world selling it, you won't get highly ranked without SEO.
It's fair enough to assume that Google and Bing (the big boys of search engines) would prefer that website only rank well by merit, and constantly re-jig their algorithms to ensure such a scenario. So, part of being an expert at SEO is producing quality websites.
I would also like you to keep in mind that there are no absolutes in SEO. Only Google knows what happens within its algorithms and they're not telling, so SEO isn't a definitive science and there are many opinions, viewpoints and worryingly, urban myths about SEO.
There are two main parts to SEO as a whole. On-page and off-page optimization. We'll discuss each in turn.
On Page Optimization
There are a couple of subsections in this too, but I don't want to go into so much detail that I'll confuse the issue right now. On-page can be looked at as letting Google know what your page is all about. When the search engine robots/spiders come to this page, they'll know it's about SEO. When they go to this page, they'll know it's about diamond rings (ladies don't look).
The most famous, and popular, form of on-page optimization is 'keyword density' also known as 'keyword stuffing'. Google can recognize multiple examples of keywords, and keyword phrases, on a page so will make it that much more likely that the page will rank highly for aforementioned keyword.
The most important, in my opinion, and especially since the Panda update, on-page factor in ranking well is to have quality content. And this is not only important for search engine rankings, but for return visitors too. If your page is crap, why would anyone bother to return to it. Nobody will sign up to your newsletters and certainly not buy any of your products.
Other things you can do are ensuring that your targeted keyword is present in the page's URL and title. As an 'alt tag' in pictures on your page, in the page's description and in headers (H1 etc)
Off Page Optimization
Still more important than on-page, is off-page optimization. The most common form of SEO.
It should be said however that without excellent on-page work, everyone you do off-page, is diluted.
This type of SEO is, simply put, link building. It's the process of creating, buying, promoting links to your page from other websites.
Every link you get is similar to the 'like' function on Facebook. Someone is giving your page the thumbs-up. A vote of confidence if you like.
Some links are worth more than others, some are next to useless and some are gold.
There are dozens of ways to get backlinks from article directory marketing to high PR (page rank) blog networks, buying links to content syndication.
What's worth noting is that backlinks with the anchor text (the text that can be clicked on) being the keyword you are promoting are preferable to merely the URL by itself.
A well thought out system of page design, top notch market research(keyword research), high quality content and great backlinking will ensure that your pages rank highly in the search engines.
There are so many other factors involved in ranking that it will be impossible to go through them all, but this should give you a steady start. In fact there are many, many SEO guides on the market that are far beyond the scope of a single page.
Now that you're able to answer the question 'what is SEO' with confidence, I suggest you start working hard on your sites. SEO can take quite a while, months sometimes to achieve first page rankings but the traffic you receive, the business you get and the satisfaction of a job well done is worth it.
If you want to become an expert at SEO you should have at least a basic knowledge of how to build a website. Once you are an expert you can quite possibly make lots of money. Find out how to win at affiliate marketing on my site.
No comments:
Post a Comment